Vocab Spiel #2

by Betsy Aaron

I might be a wino. In fact, I’m drinking a nice, chilled glass of rose while I write this. That alone does not make me a wino, and it is 5:07 in the p.m., a permissible time, especially on a weekend, to be sipping the delicious wine that was recommended to me the other day by a handsome French chef. He could have sold me swill.

I wait all year for it to be warm enough for rose. I discovered it a few years ago when I visited Spain in July and it was too hot to drink anything else (except maybe cava). The color runs the gamut from delicate pink to deep cranberry and the taste is always refreshing; good alone when writing posts, great with asparagus, goat cheese, soft-shelled crab, tapas –anything you’d eat from late spring through late summer.

When I bought the French rose that I am drinking now, I felt like I had transgressed. I caved to a seductive French accent rather than standing my ground as a student of Spanish vino. Last year, when I lived in the East Village , I bought roasado at Tinto Fino where the wines of Spain are sold by region. Since then, I’ve been drinking only Spanish wine– which does not make me a wino but an afficianado. However, the wine he was touting was super cheap so I was swayed. Being easily swayed does not make me a wino either; it makes me a pushover.

Varanasi, from The Constant Search Series

by Betsy Aaron

On the rooftop of the hotel, which the guidebook describes as a charming veranda, I sat sheltered from the newly risen sun under an awning of bougainvillea. While I sipped my first cup of morning tea, I gazed at the distant shoreline and watched the boats as they trolled for schools of pink-skinned tourists. Then I shifted my focus to the street just below and caught a calf sucking breakfast from its mother’s nipples. When I returned to my tea, I found it sealed in a skin of cooled milk.

I’d gone to bed hoping to welcome this day with the recharged enthusiasm of the early-riser but the baying of animals and the clanging of bells and drums and the waves of chanting throughout the night had left me feeling dimmed. In an hour I would be flying off to Khajuraho to look at stone carvings of gymnastically entwined lovers and I wanted to stroll along the Ganges once more before leaving.

Off-site Spiel

by be. aaron, copywriter extraordinaire

No one assigned to write should have to do it in a cubicle. OK, maybe journalists– they’re always shown pecking away at their keyboards in movies and on TV and though I’ve done all kinds of things, I’ve never attempted to report the news. Technically however, they are at work in a newsroom, not a cubicle.

It’s not just that copywriters need an environment free of distraction, because working off-site, which sounds so much more professional than working at home, presents loads of distractions: dog-walking, eating, errands, puttering, pacing, staring out the window. Procrastination is as essential to the writing process as picking one’s nose. And like the latter activity, best done in private.

Non-writing activity is productive because diversion allows ideas to bubble up from places so deep, dark and inaccessible that they require trickery to tap into. Of course, the creative nap, (literally sleeping on it,) is also an effective way of having ideas– again, an activity which cannot be comfortably undertaken in a cubicle.

Clients think that working off-site means that I am in my jammies all day; mais non, getting dressed is part of the procrastination process. There’s the issue of color palette, footwear choice and of course, the accessories. Even if no one sees me at work, I am looking good.

If the assignment is to write copy that connects with consumers, one must be out in the world to witness how things are actually consumed. A cubicle reduces all consumer activity to abstraction sans context. (For more on this, or if you’d like to use more persuasive arguments than mine to convince your boss to let you telecommute, consult “The Practice of Everyday Life” by Michel de Certeau. It’s thesis is essentially, if you are naming nail polish colors, go out and get a mani/pedi.)

Today’s Question

by be. aaron

Do nomads leave the past behind?

The Happy Ending w/ Apologies to Charlotte Bronte

by Carole Jardins, Guest Editor

With the approach of sandal season, I recently set out to rehabilitate my feet. It was a Monday and the place that gets most of the foot traffic in my neighborhood was closed, so I walked two blocks up to a salon that looked less inviting but whose doors were open. I’d seen the traffic-crossing guard inside one day and she’s lived in this neighborhood all of her life so I figured it must be OK.

What I discovered upon entering was that the prices were lower than at my preferred place, that the probability of getting some kind of fungus was higher, and that two men occupied the pedicure perches.

I may have a future in undercover work because, though the men knew I was there, they talked as though their audience was only the indentured employees, young women who never raised their eyes from scraping and pruning the feet in their face and whose English seemed limited to, “You pay now.”

Udaipur, from The Constant Search Series

by Betsy Aaron

Lois sat on the ledge of the glassless window and posed for the Australian jogger as if she was on the verge of falling out. Aman, her guide, stood just outside the frame of the photo and as Lois lifted her feet to feign being swept away, he focused on her ankles.

They’d passed the jogger as they drove up the steep dirt road that brought them to the Monsoon Palace. Each evening at sunset Lois had studied it from her hotel rooftop, a distance that diminished the scale and substance of the white monument so that it appeared to float from its mountain perch into the land of fairy tales.

Now that they’d arrived, she could see that it had been cleaned out like Versailles—except that unlike that palace, no evidence of a former elegance remained. Aman pointed out the off-limits wing that now housed a government radio station. The bare walls of the main entrance were splattered with the rusty blood of bats or birds and the only precious thing left was the view, which still made visible the swirling approach of the seasonal storms.

Lois was just coming out of the jungle—which was far more inviting than the hole in the muddied floor of the unlit public bathroom, when the jogger arrived. She hoped he hadn’t seen her squatting on tiptoes in an effort to keep her haunches as far as possible from the insect world.

“Training for The Olympics?” Perhaps he was too startled to notice that she was feeling for her zipper.

“Why don’t more tourists combine fitness with sight-seeing?” He could have been a jungle animal—alert and poised for action.

“Because this afternoon it’s over 110 Fahrenheit?” Why was she unable to calculate in Celsius?

“Got a water bottle, met my goal, I’ve earned this evening’s beer.” Was he looking for company?

“Are you staying in Udaipur?”

Malden Ave., from Houses+Hunger Stories

by Betsy Aaron

Jerry

Why do change-of-address forms require residents to fill in the blank with a permanent address? This is not a riddle; I am a government employee and I don’t have the answer. In my experience, people don’t stay in one place, houses do. And now, even that’s not true. I’m out walking the streets every day except weekends but the changes don’t happen then, they happen so close to the front of your face that you don’t notice: there’s morning fog and next thing you know, it’s lifted. First, the Honey Bucket arrives, then the construction crew. Last summer right here on Malden, 1515-A, 1515-B, 1515-C and 1515-D went up in the space where 1515 stood alone since the start of last century. That’s four times the amount of mail to deliver.

If you were looking for streets to stroll on, you wouldn’t head this way unless you were scouting for properties to snag. First, there’s the burnt-out corner lot where the Gundersen house stood until last Christmas Eve. Of course the next day was a federal holiday, so by the time I arrived on the scene, even though you could still see tiny geysers of smoke from beneath the charred remains of living room, it seemed to me like the entire family had been erased. When I uncovered a soggy gift with the toe of my hiking boot, and found a one-eyed doll in need of last rites, I felt like a detective, not a letter carrier. I’m told that their mail now gets barged to a San Juan island so maybe they’re not coming back. No goodbyes. They’ve probably sold their lot to one of the condo developers. Before spider season ends, I wouldn’t be surprised if another two-tone four-unit townhouse sprouts up in place of the perennials. If I re-built the Gundersen house, I’d paint it green for the one blue spruce that’s left to shade the space that used to be porch.

Then there’s Althea Morton’s eyesore. My supervisor tells me she’s living in the house she was born in. Unusual. If you peek in—not that I do, unless the mail piles up for more than a couple of days and then I check for signs of life– you’ll see the hand-cranked laundry tub that her mother bought new, the peeling kitchen linoleum with the sun-dial pattern in the center, and the flowered wallpaper that probably got water-stained before my grandparents came over from Macao. Lots of residents don’t receive a cable bill—people who aren’t engineers or computer geeks need to practice thrift in this town– but Althea doesn’t even get the catalogues. And, she uses an icebox. I know because when I was first assigned this route, she tried to hand off a Swiss chard casserole as a Christmas tip.

Free, from Houses+Hunger Stories

by Betsy Aaron

Ever since my wife Dori died, I can’t stop myself cleaning so I’ll just say it: thank God I’ve been robbed. The Deputy said it looks like the work of Don Ainsley’s twins over on the north side of Crescent Lake. Word is they’ve been cleaning out the weekenders’ cabins mid-week since early spring. Those boys got the weed-whacker and the VCR we bought on sale at Price Club just this January, my La-Z-boy, the washer/dryer, our dinette set including table and four matching chairs. They got the mattress, the boxspring, the emergency twenties we hid underneath, the inflatable raft, they even took Dori’s brown paper bags filled with marigold seeds from last year’s garden. Nothing beats the bugs out of tomatoes better than marigolds.

Dori and I spent happy afternoons here at the lake. We didn’t always talk the day away; sometimes we’d just dangle our legs overboard and let the perch nibble our toes. Dori could really fish. They took the tackle box and fishing gear but left me the rowboat and oars. They cleaned out the last of Dori right down to the soft hairbrush that stroked her fine white curls. Didn’t leave a single strand, and I’m grateful. I won’t get out here again until well past Memorial Day. My daughter Candra wants me over in Livingston for a visit. I plan to take the long way home. Always wanted to visit Lake Ponchartrain just so I could say it out loud: Lake Ponchartrain.

I scoured out the whole Lake Forest house myself. Tried to give everything away in a garage sale but the neighbors wouldn’t take a thing for free. Not the waffle iron, not the cut-glass punch bowl still boxed in straw with the toy-sized dangling cups, not the water -resistant recipe cards for corn relish and pickled okra, not the sardine cans Dori used to mold handyman-sized soap. I couldn’t see myself selling her pink slip, soft in my sandpaper mitts like the inside of your cheek.

by be.aaron

I consider myself to be somewhat sophisticated, well educated and reasonably well traveled, so I find it embarrassing that millions of people in the world routinely master multiple languages while I am still learning new words in the one language in which I claim fluency.

Road Trip, from Houses+Hunger Stories

by Betsy Aaron

Before Harlan took off in the yellow morning, we fell into a spontaneous dance to the slow rhythm of us. His embrace met me like home after a dried-up day. He felt sturdy, like an alligator juniper tree. He smelled of gasoline and leather and his own warm blood. He smelled like Harlan Davis, the man I met in Vegas last week. Before I could put the brakes on, I slapped him full in the face with an anger that seemed like it lived inside someone else. I’d rather be on the road headed anywhere than find myself alone, waiting in a motel room.

“Sugar plum, I’ve stored up every second of us together. That’s the movie I’ll be watching through my windshield, but if I don’t head up to Albuquerque right now I’ll never make it back tonight in time for our next dance.” He beamed at me full-strength.

“You’re not running out on me, are you Harlan?” I know first-hand about being the one who leaves without regret.

“I told you Jacquie, there’s nothing for me in Pahrump, if that’s what you’re working yourself up to. Virginia and me are through. I have some business that’s all.” He palmed the crown of my head.

“I believe that you believe what you’re saying Harlan, but one week out is not enough for me to bank on. I’ll need more by way of deposit than that empty pack of cigarettes you plan on leaving by what’s now your side of the bed.”

“Somebody’s sure done a number on you. Jacquie, I’m asking you- where’s your sense of trust?” Any possible answer melted in a tiny swallow before we kissed.

That’s how it went. One week out and Harlan plunks his moonstone and platinum pinkie ring down on my side of the bed and hits the road. Says he fell off the wagon in Vegas and now he’s back to counting ninety days of sobriety. Says he wants to clean up and fly right. He’s in a fragile way so I give him his space, but I take the ring for something to hold on to.

I’ve been sitting in this motel room since we got to town yesterday. I’ve been facing the bed Harlan barely slept in. I’ve been sweating it out on this scratchy chair, next to this greasy window fan that blocks out the bottom part of the day. The framed sky hangs over me, blue as a bruise. I never thought that when I opened the door, I’d be face to face with the New Mexico State Police.

Caretaking

by Betsy Aaron

Situations-Wanted Ad: Non-abstemious agnostic wants to live like Agnes Martin—but not during that spell when she had to work as a dishwasher. I’ve already done the shit jobs: picking out pubic hairs from motel bathtubs, selling marked-down bras and girdles to jumbo-size women, working overtime for coke fiends who used the business of documentary film production for cover.

Art History

by Betsy Aaron

My neighbor is an artist and I’ve been walking my dog Vera past her door daily looking for evidence of how she lives. I’m new here now but no longer young. When I was, I lived in the same neighborhood but it was different, so even though my first address in this city was only a few blocks from my current sublet situation, things feel foreign. I find comfort in still being able to hear Ukrainian spoken at newsstands, in the exchanges of landlords who greet the day by stepping out to sweep their portion of sidewalk clean, and on church steps that are crowded each Sunday, despite the growing population of atheists who sleep into the late afternoon and then emerge to observe their ritual of brunch.

The prevailing street style is Ramones meets vintage, just as it was when Joey could be seen skulking around, though there was no street named for him and if there had been, I would not have explored it because even though this neighborhood is now full of bars and boutiques and salons manned by young Japanese hairstylists, I first knew it as a place safe only for drug dealers. Like so many others, I’d come from a different culture, in my case, via Long Island Railroad. I was a recent college graduate, numb over the death of my father. Though he often told me that I had common sense, I had no idea how to care for myself. I loved my father but I often wished that I had been born into a family of artists like that of my neighbor.

In the time that she has resided at her present address, I’ve had seven— excluding an all expenses-paid summer-long residency at a five-star Italian hotel courtesy of a client whom I despised, nine months in a corporate flat in London that caught fire twice, and the six months I spent sleeping on a friend’s living room couch while I gave Los Angeles a go.

Let Me Know

by Betsy Aaron

What makes a man,
who becomes a woman
with no biological clock,
tick?